April 2013

April 30, 2013

Architecture has ben constantly renovating itself in the last few years, not just for what regards projects based on futuristic visions, utopias and dystopias, but also in terms of tools for professionals. Parametric design has for example become a key architectural process, even though some of us - architecture students included - struggle at times to understand what this concept means.

The volume Parametrico Nostrano (in Italian) by Giovanni Corbellini and Cecilia Morassi (published by LetteraVentidue) tries to make things easy by analysing this word through the results of a workshop entitled "Progetti automatici" (Automatic Projects) organised last year in Gorizia by Giovanni Corbellini.

Each practice launched a different project - explained in the volume through texts, diagrams and images - to inspire the students and introduce them to parametric design.

Aion started with paper, scissors and glue, and asked the students to create geometric figures with paper before moving onto the screen. The architectural practice highlighted in this way the importance of deciding where you want to get with your project before moving onto the digital medium.

From a visual point of view Aion's paper experiments - based on three themes, ribbons, surfaces and volumes - are extremely inspiring also for fashion and interior designers.

Co-de-IT moved from controlling the possibilities offered by parametric design and, focusing on the Grasshopper plug-in for Rhino, looked at the concepts of genotype and phenotype.

Students were asked to build a modular component characterised by a set of rules (a sort of genetic code) and install it on a surface manifesting peculiar characteristics dictated by the interaction of the same initial set of rules with the geometrical properties of the specific environment surrounding it.

Developing a system based on the rediscovered turtle geometry (that at the moment is a recurrent and constant obsession in certain fields...), Disguincio&co, focused on 4D and on the time variable, conceiving a building as a virtual organism in continuous evolution. Students planned a small pavilion using these principles and adding generative values to the parameters to examine the interactions and the adaptability of different elements.

The workshop participants were divided in different groups for EcoLogicStudio project: the latter analysed the processing of landscape occupation by human beings and allowed the students to work on digital representations, recreating them through structures made with yarns.

The book also features a series of essays by the different architectural practices involved in the workshop. The last text by Giovanni Corbellini is particularly interesting since it looks at parametric design as a tool that opens up new possibilities for what regards planning and embraces the complexity of continuous variation, that is often translated in biomimetic curvilinear and fluid shapes. While wondering in which ways parametric design has introduced changes in conceiving and communicating a project, Corbellini highlights that architecture has been challenged to face various modern contradictions and has generated in recent years fascinating structures such as Philip Beesley's formations or experimental speculations like R&Sie(n)'s biomorphic urban structures capable of altering and modifying themselves in accordance with the needs of human beings.

The merit of this book (written in an accessible language) stands in showing that it is vitally important to introduce young people to new systems even in the very early stages of their architectural studies. Such introduction will allow them to come up with more radical solutions in future, but will also help them developing a critical mind open to reinterpreting technological innovations in a less desenchanted and idealistic key.

April 29, 2013

Offering the highest degrees of dynamism and lightweight flexibility has always been one of the prerogatives of Nike designers. In the last few years, though, the brand has tried to go even further, pushing the boundaries of the lightweight design approach by studying natural motion, and coming up with new technologies, such as the Nike Free and the Nike Flyknit, that can offer athletes the comfort of barefoot running combined with the highest performances.

To launch the new Nike Flyknit Racer, Nike HTM Flyknit Trainer+ and Nike Free Inneva Woven trainers, designed to mimick the natural biomechanics of the foot and characterised by one-piece knit uppers made with multiple yarns threaded through a knit machine to seamlessly integrate support, breathability and stretch, the brand recently commissioned a special installation to different digital artists.

Entitled The Art + Science of Super Natural Motion and launched during the latest edition of Milan Design Week, the installation revolved around the themes of fit, flexibility, elasticity and movement, and featured Universal Everything, Daniel Widrig and Quayola + Sinigaglia.

All the artists involved mixed technology, design, art and sport together: multidisciplinary studio Universal Everything explored movement with a 3D interactive experience based on generative design that allowed the viewer to manipulate intricate strands of colour with the sweep of an arm (image 3 in this post); artist, architect and designer Daniel Widrig employed animation software to create snapshots of an abstract geometric figure moving in a 3D space that reconfigured and expanded while accelerating (images 5, 6, and 7); sound and visual duo Davide Quayola and Natan Sinigaglia presented an abstract digital sculpture, a combination of audio-visual performance, drawing, photography and video programming (image 4).

The Art + Science of Super Natural Motion will be travelling to Tokyo, New York and London until October 2013.

You're an architect, designer and artist, did you find it challenging to combine together in this project your work with sport?Daniel Widrig: The brief for the project was an abstract one. We tried to work with the ideas of motion and flexibility on a conceptual rather than literal basis using them as catalysts for the generation of an object. Both motion and flexibility are themes we have worked on before, although in different contexts and scales. Together with Nike we developed the idea of a sculpture that not only captures or freezes motion but that has the potential to define a new, supernatural kind of motion.

Which parameters linked to the sport field inspired your installation?Daniel Widrig: The main drivers for the projects were the concepts of motion and flexibility. In order to develop a piece that has its own character while representing new and unexpected ideas of motion and flexibility it was important not to get too literal on a metaphorical level.

What kind of software did you use to create this animation?Daniel Widrig: The geometry was generated through blending components from quite a few different simulation, 3D modelling and engineering applications. In order to materialise the object we then worked with programs to translate the three-dimensional mesh into a solid object in order to 3D print it.

3D and animation software are linked with parameters and algorithms, while the new Nike trainers are made with a mix of multiple yarns that are threaded through the knit machine to guarantee a dynamic silhouette and shape. While working on your project did you ever draw any comparison between the modus operandi of a designer working with animaltion software and the actual product?Daniel Widrig: We studied the Nike Free Inneva Woven project in detail and that was really interesting. It is rare to see an industrial product blending handcraft and industrial production to such perfection. In our studio we are not only experimenting digitally; we are pretty much interested in creating physical output and always like to look into other fields in order to develop new ideas. So in terms of design and manufacturing the shoe was quite a source of inspiration during the development of the project. Besides, weaving and knitting are based on algorithms as well and the development of a shoe is a highly parametric process.

Nike Flyknit Racer, Nike HTM Flyknit Trainer and Nike Free Inneva Woven: which is your fave one and why?Daniel Widrig: I own a pair of Nike Free Inneva Woven and I really like them in terms of their performance. In terms of looks I really love the Flyknit Racer Multi-Color as the coloration really accentuates the complexity of the knit.

April 27, 2013

There has always been a strange affinity between fashion and death. Throughout the years the fashion industry also turned into the protagonist or the set for a few thriller films involving models and murders.

The tradition, as we saw in a previous post, officially started with Mario Bava’s Sei donne per l’assassino (Blood and Black Lace, 1964), though today I'd like to rediscover (through the vaults of Kutmusic) a Spanish classic that in some ways anticipated it - Alta Costura (1954).

Directed by Luis Marquina, and based on the eponymous novel by Darío Fernández Flórez, the film focuses on Tona, a model who goes to visit her ex-boyfriend and finds him murdered (he lives at the Residencia Fortuny - another fashion hint?). Scared she will be accused of being the killer also because she is now engaged to be married to Ramón, she runs away and goes to work.

Tona rushes to her job at the fashion house where a show to present the new collection is taking place, but her fear, anxiety and panic grow as the film progresses. The movie is actually pretty short (it's roughly 80 minutes long), and the main protagonist is definitely not Tona or the murder, but the catwalk show.

Bava fans may remember how each model was killed in a different way in Blood and Black Lace, almost to hint at different designs in a collection, but here the designs donned by the models take on a psychological meaning almost symbolising Tona's growing fears and anxieties.

While her colleagues seem to be wearing more frivolous dresses often matched with cute hats, as tension rises Tona wears a strikingly dark gown that the fictional fashion designer in the film, Amaro Lopez, calls "Drama" (image 6 in this post).

Towards the end of the film when a policeman arrives to question her, Tona is wearing a beautiful wedding gown that maybe hints at the fact that the real murder hopes to turn her from innocent into a sort of sacrificial victim.

Though the film is not extremely well acted and the mystery is more or less solved with a quick revelation about the identity of the murderer, there is a fashion bonus: all the designs featured in the catwak show were by Cristobal Balenciaga (check out the wedding dress in images 7 and 9 in this posts - it seems to anticipate Balenciaga's 1960 gown for Queen Fabiola's marriage), and this perfectly explains why all the gowns, dresses, coats and accessories look extremely beautiful, sumptuous and grave.

In some ways the film calls to mind the catwalk show in Michelangelo Antonioni's Le amiche(The Girlfriends, 1955), and while there are differences (Antonioni's film was taken from Cesare Pavese’s novel Tra donne sole and his movie was charged with sociological connotations), also in Antonioni's film the catwalk show is marked by sadness and anxiety as Clelia learns about Rosetta's suicide during the fashion show.

In Antonioni's film the fashion show is also a form of spectacle hinting at a sad truth: both the fashion and cinema industries try to use the female body to make money. In more or less the same way, one model tells Tona during a break that she'd better lie about seeing her ex-boyfriend's corpse as women can't tell the truth and lying is the only defence against men's tyranny and selfishness.

Trivia: the director originally wanted to shoot a thriller with an erotic edge, but the Spanish censorship prevented him from doing so and the film was reduced to a basic crime story set in the fashion world. Yet it's definitely worth rediscovering it and adding it to your "dark fashion film" section in your personal movie collection (if you can find a copy...).

April 25, 2013

In our digital age the power of the image has taken on a performative role and it's often the norm for fashion designers to create extreme garments that constrict and modify the body. Yet, it could be argued, this is nothing new since, even in the Renaissance, the elites favoured body-constricting pieces that straightened, stiffened, rigidified and limited the movements. An exhibition currently on at The Cité Internationale de la Dentelle et de la Mode (International Centre of Lace and Fashion) in Calais, France, explores the correspondence between grandeur, extravangance and excess in historical costumes and in contemporary fashion.

Co-curated by Shazia Boucher and Isabelle Paresys “Plein les yeux! Le spectacle de la mode” (A feast for the eyes! Spectacular fashions) explores how fashion modified and altered the natural silhouette of the body, the posture and the gestures of the wearer as early as the 16th century.

The main theme of the exhibition is illustrated through historical pieces, film costumes from movies such as Patrice Chéreau's La Reine Margot (Queen Margot, 1994), items of haute couture, paintings, documentary pieces from several art museum collections, and movie extracts.

The exhibition is divided into five sections with the first three - "Ruff Party", "Garments of Light", and "Caged Bodies" - exploring the power of ruffs and collars, luxurious gold and silver embroidered outfits, voluminous extensions and tight corsets.

The "Costumery" section features instead a space where visitors can understand why certain fashions truly pushed the body beyond its natural limits through replicas of accessories and costumes from the 16th to the 20th century made with the help of the students at La Source, College of Textile Creation, Performing Arts and Art Trades in Nogent-sur-Marne.

Can you tell us more about the genesis of this exhibition?Shazia Boucher: The exhibition was actually going to take place in 2012, the year of the London Olympic Games, to connect the idea of performance in sports and in the artistic fields to fashion. Fashion can be a real challenge: it is a bodily performance for the person who has to wear the pieces that transform the body, and a performance of skills by the artisans who are going to create these pieces. We start from the Renaissance because that's really the period when the elite started to wear these spectacularly voluminous body extentions and when splendid and dazzling fabrics decorated with gold embroideries, pearls, and lace, became fashionable.

Why do clothes and accessories become key elements to create a powerful figure during the Renaissance?Shazia Boucher: In the Renaissance period man takes centre stage, he becomes the main focus in all domains of creativity, from architecture and painting to clothing. Differentiating oneself through the magnificence of clothing became important from then. New notions concerning elegance and social manners started being codified in books such as Il Cortegiano (The Book of the Courtesan) by Baldassarre Castiglione who explained to the gentleman how he should act to keep his social position. These new models started travelling all over Europe and the same representations arrived in different countries explaining how aristocratic figures should place themselves and how the clothing contributed to one's attitude.

Was it difficult to select the pieces that had to go in?Shazia Boucher: It is very difficult to show clothing from the Renaissance because there are very few examples remaining in museums. There are more pieces from the 17th century, but mainly from the northern European countries. There are lace and textiles parts from this period but there are not many outfits and costumes, so the whole difficulty was presenting this period without the actual pieces. This is why the introductory part that focuses on the ruff conceived as a spectacular body extension, features loans of lace for cuffs and ruffs and collars dating from the 17th century from the Royal Museum of Art and History of Brussels, plus a very rare piece from the Musée national de la Renaissance in Ecouen.

Moralists called the ruff a vain piece of attire, yet this item is considered as a symbol of those times, why was the ruff so emblematic? Shazia Boucher: The heyday of the ruff and the big big collar is the end of the 16th century, and it coincides with the beginning of the production of lace. The ruff was a very luxurious item not just because it was made with materials such as lace and gold and silver threads, but because it took many hours to produce it, so it was a very technical article. It would take up to 10 metres of fine linen to make one and it had to be regularly cleaned and prepared. In its heydays when it had a very large dimension, the ruff was a very uncomfortable item, it made everything very difficult, even moving your head or eating, people would hold their heads stiff and upright, reflecting the postures of the era’s social elite, so wearing this article was a physical performance for those people, but there was something else about it. The piece also isolated the face of the wearer, showcasing it, and the face was considered to reflect a person's soul in those times. There are two examples of ruffs in the public collections in Europe, one is in Ecoen and the other in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, but they are two different types, one type is called "confusion" because the pleating in the ruff is very loose, it's not starched or stiffened; the other one is a "col à rebato", a collar with a metallic support so that it can stand up behind the head, and it's like a fan collar very similar to the one donned by Isabelle Adjani in La Reine Margot.

In your opinion, why human beings keep on modifying their bodies wearing constricting garments? Shazia Boucher: To be unsatisfied with oneself is something that has always characterised the human spirit. In the early days this was criticised because it was as if man was trying to replace God, playing around and changing his natural body. In the exhibition we wanted to illustrate the theatrical relationship between the body and fashion and the fact that the idea of fashion creating a new body is very old. In our modern day society we think that contemporary fashion designers are creating very extravagant fashions that nobody can really wear, but even the extremely high heels young models wear on catwalk runways existed in the Renaissance, they were called chopines.

What do the paintings included in the exhibition tell us about fashion? Shazia Boucher: Most of our knowledge of clothing from this period comes from the paintings, so we also wanted to show a portrait of a marriage from the Museum of Fine Art in Lille, and a painting from Belgium showing a young aristocratic family, because it's interesting to see how this notion of submitting your body to these encaging types of clothing started from a very young age. Children were also inculcated into this type of demeanour and the young boys in the painting on display are wearing a dress, as it was the fashion for boys until they were 6-7, and little collars as well. This painting show that aristocratic people accepted such constraints because they were educated to do so from a very young age.

You have seen the garments from a privileged point of view, from the inside out, what fascinates you the most, their construction or their elaborate decorations?Shazia Boucher: The students at "La Source", College of Textile Creation, Performing Arts and Art Trades in Nogent-sur-Marne, did a lot of research and, following original patterns, recreated costumes and items from those times. What's so intriguing about these garments is the fact that they were beautifully made outside and inside, and they also featured special paddings to keep people warm because there was no heating in the castles. I think that's what we have lost today - a genuine passion and love for details.

The exhibition also features movie costumes and haute couture garments: what's the main difference between them?Shazia Boucher: In cinema or in theatre the final effect is important. For example, a black dress in a black and white film is often in reality dark blue because the film will pick its colour much better and there are always specific techniques or materials like plastic instead of fabrics that costume designers use to try and get the effect across. This is even more true in theatrical costumes: in this case costumes are even more exaggerated because they are employed on a stage in a theatrical room where there are a lot of people, some of them sitting very far from the scene, so everything must be as clear and as visual as possible for a large public.

Do you feel that directors favour historically correct costumes? Shazia Boucher: In the first part of the 21st century directors were really interested in portraying something that was historically correct; now I think what's important is that it can be realistic for the public to think that the scene they are watching may be happening at the end of the 16th century, but the costumes are not necessarily historically exact in the details. So, quite often, costume designers take a lot of liberties to reach the final effect. For example, the dress in the marriage scene in La Reine Margot is very close in its silhouette and shape to the Italian Renaissance dresses from the end of the 16th century, but the interlaced motifs that are on it are screen-printed because it was obviously impossible to recreate the dress using the same techniques and materials that were popular at the time. Besides, costume designer Moidele Bickel wanted to have a dress that could be comfortable for the actress to wear, so she opted for a lighter material. The Renaissance dress worn by Isabelle Adjani in the film is also historically incorrect for the period because the collar didn't exist then, but became fashionable only 25 years later, yet the main point in the film was using the collar to give the character a very distinctive attitude. Margot the head of the Catholics also wears a very ornate red and silver dress while her future husband, the king of the Protestants wears a black costume, even though, in a historically correct portrayal, he would have worn a costume as elaborate as Margot's. In the film the difference between the sobriety and the glamour of the two characters is supposed to hint at the opposition between Protestants and Catholics that led to the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre a few weeks after the wedding.

In your opinion, which contemporary fashion designer included in the exhibition has any links with film or theatre costumes? Shazia Boucher: Thierry Mugler has very strong ties with the world of theatre because he was a dancer for the Rhin Opera before he became a fashion designer and also designed costumes for theatre productions, such as the Macbeth that was produced by Comédie Française for the opening of the Festival d'Avignon in 1985. The exhibition includes the costume he designed for Lady Macbeth and all the preliminary drawings, and some of the drawings reflect his creativity as a fashion designer. They are very angular, very striking, geometrical like his creations for fashion, so you can clearly see his influence as a fashion designer reappearing in the costumes he designed for this Elizabethan period drama. We also have two pieces by Christian Lacroix and one of the pieces is a dress that he made for the launching of the perfume C'est la vie, at the beginning of the '90s. The dress is very close in its structure to the grand pannier dresses of the 18th century that were favoured at the Royal Court. There is a reproduction just behind the dress in the exhibition of a potrait of Catherine II of Russia dressed in the French fashion of the 18th century that allows visitors to spot the correspondences between Lacroix's dress and her costume. Fashion designers today know their fashion history but at the same time don't try to reproduce just one, they just choose very freely to mix together in the collective imagination different historical periods during which costumes were really spectacular.

In which ways is the theme of the "performance" tackled in the "Costumery" section? Shazia Boucher: We really wanted people to put themselves in the place of these elites, so we worked with a school training costume designers. The students recreated replicas of early 17th century costumes, whole ensembles for a woman, a man, a young boy and a young girl. They made all the underclothing, the stays, the corsages, and even the socks and some of the pieces can be worn by the visitors. We wanted to illustrate how complicated it was wearing these pieces and how you couldn't dress yourself by yourself, but you needed help to get dressed. It actually takes up to 45 minutes to don the whole ensemble for a woman with two people dressing you. We actually helped my co-curator getting into and out one of the costumes and it was tricky. Once you get on the pieces you immediately realise that your posture has been dramatically altered, but also the notion of the space around you immediately changes, and this is a great way to tackle the physical performance behind the dress code of those times.

April 24, 2013

The TextielLab is a "knowledge centre" based inside the TextielMuseum in Tilburg (we will hopefully be discovering more about them in a future post). This unique institution that could be considered as a working atelier is specialised in the manufacturing of knitted and woven fabrics and includes an open studio with experts and technicians who develop products and projects for different national and international professionals, including artists, architects, interior and fashion designers and students.

The Lab produces an annual yearbook and the fourth edition of the volume - launched by director Errol van de Werdt during the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan - is just out. TextielLab Yearbook 2012 showcases a wide variety of projects spanning through different disciplines. Leaf through it to discover installations, fashion collections and experimental projects inspired by an extensive textile library, museum collection and clever temporary exhibitions, and created with the help and guidance of product developers, yarn experts and technicians at the TextielLab.

The book includes extremely stimulating projects and ideas briefly analysed and accompanied by a selection of photographs visualising the process from design to finished product that show how the Lab has grown for what regards the volume of work, but also its complexity.

The Yearbook opens with the tapestry pieces designed by four international architecture firms - Xaveer De Geyter Architecten (XDGA), Vers plus de bien-être (V+), Studio 012 Bernardo Secchi Paola Viganò with Karbon and 51N4E with L’AUC and Bureau Bas Smets - to reflect on the urban infrastructure of Brussels and to design a new vision for the North-South rail link. The first section of the volume is dedicated to architectural/interior design pieces and also features the fabric wallcovering by Kiki van Eijk for the Statenzaal of the Noordbrabants Museum, characterised by an abstract pattern and a figurative feel and made with flame retardant yarns by Trevira; custom-made clothing for chairs by Bernotat & Co and the "Growing Caterpillar", a textile transformer piece by Studio Samira Boon with NEXT Architects, designed to create a more intimate space inside Tilburg Concert Hall during small chamber music concerts.

A large section focuses on fashion projects such as Walter Van Beirendonck's Autumn/Winter 2012-13 menwear collection, inspired by wooden shields from Papua New Guinea, Marga Weimans' patterned fabrics for her "Fashion House: The Most Beautiful Dress in the World" installation, experimental knitwear pieces by Conny Groenewegen for her A/W 2013-14 collection and a series of projects looking at smart textiles, knitwear, interior design and fashion created in collaboration with young talents, artists and students from differet institutions who pushed the boundaries of their disciplines to create exclusive pieces with the TextielLab experts (some of them even managed to hack a knitting machine...).

The Yearbook also includes a section on the TextielMuseum, conceived as a springboard for new work, and on the exclusive pieces created for the exhibition entitled "Turkish Red & More" by five Dutch designers and design agencies (among the others there is BCXSY's project made by embroidering a lace-like pattern onto water-soluble fabric).

Students should check out the final section of the book, about the European Textile Trainee (ETT), a project for eight talented students from various European academies who take part every year in a special programme in the Netherlands and Italy (the latter is a key country as the Lab also employs yarns by many Italian manufacturers including Ilaria, Zegna Baruffa, Cariaggi, Gruppo Tessile Industriale, Safil and Lineapiù).

The interviews with two TextielLab experts featured in the yearbook insert are particularly interesting because they prove there are more technical but also more rewarding and stimulating careers for all those who want to go beyond the boundaries of mere fashion design and develop products based on quality and research.

It doesn't matter if you're an expert, a professional, a design student or a passionate amateur knitter or weaver, if you're into textiles, the TextielLab Yearbook 2012 (available for €14.95 from the museum’s TextielShop) should definitely be a must in your personal library.

April 23, 2013

The "brief comparison" post is becoming a sort of a stable column on this site, so let's honour it today with a quick juxtaposition between music and knitwear. Today's comparison looks indeed at Joy Division's iconic cover for the album "Unknown Pleasures" (1979) and at a top made with abyss blue "Empire" yarn from the Spring/Summer 2014 collection of Italian yarn manufacturer Safil (specialised in a wide range of yarns for knitting, weaving, and furnishing but also high tech yarns).

The album cover by Peter Saville was based on an image of radio waves from pulsar CP 1919, from The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy, that Saville reversed from black-on-white to white-on-black; the top features instead an intriguing waving layered motif inspired by one of the key trends for the S/S 14 season - deconstructing and reconstructing geometric forms and architectures to create new aesthetic rules.

April 22, 2013

"Vibrant intense colours. Stunning prints. Magnetic forms," claimed a 1985 advert for the swimwear collection designed by Israel-based company Gottex. Launched by Lea Gottlieb and her husband Armin, the house was extremely successful at the time, having injected a healthy dose of glamour into swimsuits while elevating beachwear to resort statement.

An exhibition that opened a month ago at Design Museum Holon traces back the history of the company and celebrates its founder.

Curated by Ayala Raz, "Lady of the Daisies: Homage to the late designer and entrepreneur Lea Gottlieb", features key looks carefully selected from 1,000 designs, together with photographs, films and catalogues.

Born in Hungary in 1918, Gottlieb emigrated to Israel in 1949 after World War II together with her family. Husband Armin ran a raincoat factory in Czechoslovakia, but his products were not appropriate for the climate of the Middle East, so, in 1956, they decided to switch onto swimsuits founding Gottex Swimwear Brands Inc.

Soon Gottex (the name is a combination of two words - "Gottlieb" and "textiles") earned a reputation as a fashion leader: Gottlieb was the first fashion designer to think about transforming beachwear into a 24 hour total look, complementing swimsuits with matching tops, dresses, tunics, pareos and skirts.

Gottlieb's sophisticated designs were characterised by bold graphics or prints drawn by hand. The latter were often inspired by her passion for floral motifs that came from her war memories: the designer often used to hide her head in a bouquet of flowers to avoid being recognized as a Jew at Nazi checkpoints.

The other key selling point of Gottlieb's designs was the fact that all the shapes were engineered around the body and thought with one main aim in mind - flattering the female body with pieces that offered great bust support (check out early Gottex adverts, they even mention mastectomy swimsuits - which fashion company nowadays ever mentions such products that may actually help women regaining their self-esteem?).

In the '70s Gottex was favoured by prominent figures and celebrities and sold its products in over 75 countries. In 1972, Gottlieb won first prize in the International Fashion Show in Cannes competing against 186 manufacturers from around the world.

A year later, while the Yom Kippur War broke out, Gottlieb cancelled a European tour, took over daily operations at Gottex and kept on producing her garments, sending cars to pick up the workers living in suburban communities where there was no bus service, while arranging fashion shows for the troops. Her efforts were rewarded: The Calgary Herald from November 1973 reports that, even in such conditions, the company managed to double the exports.

Gottex prospered in the years that followed: the leading exporter of fashion swimwear to the United States in the '80s, the company hit its biggest success in this decade thanks to a strapless one-piece swimsuit that became the most widely sold style in the world.

Failing to adapt to fashion trends, Gottlieb’s designs lost their appeal in the '90s and she was forced to sell her company in 1997.

Yet the indomitable and unstoppable Gottlieb continued to design a new collection every year up to 2002 for an eponymous swimwear company she had launched when she was 85. The designer passed away last November in Tel Aviv.

The exhibition looks at Gottex as a key figure in the international fashion scene, homaging her through her achievements and vision and highlighting her merit in innovating materials and opening new markets while putting Israel on the fashion map.

The main part of the event includes some of the most stunning designs Gottlieb created, from one piece swimsuits and bikinis to kaftans and harem pants in rich in colours, densely embroidered with appliqued motifs or decorated with symbols such as the star of David, the seven-branched candelabrum or hamsa hands; other beautiful designs are inspired by Egypt and worth of Cleopatra or move from painters of the 19th and 20th centuries from Van Gogh to Paul Gaugin (Gottlieb's "Jamaica" collection features prints of Gaugin's Tahitian women). These arty pieces are showcased next to artworks or illustrations by Leah Cohen for Gottex.

The second gallery focuses on Gottex's contemporary history with new Creative Director Molly Grad, who prior to Gottex designed for international fashion houses including Stella McCartney, Yves Saint Laurent and Gianfranco Ferré, and features her illustrations and a new piece especially designed for this event, a long evening silk bronze dress.

The exhibition is complemented with video clips documenting selected fashion shows by the brand and Lea Gottlieb will be celebrated further next year with a volume focused on her work and style.

While putting together this exhibition, what kind of impression did you get about Lea Gottlieb, what kind of woman was she and did you get the chance of working alongside her while sorting and selecting the materials from the archives?Ayala Raz: I started working on this exhibition in 2004, when it was meant to be in the Israeli Art Museum in Tel Aviv. We focused on it for half a year, but then the work was stopped. At that time Ms Gottlieb was 87 and she was very active. She was always around and she couldn't stand the fact that we had to make choices. She loved every single thing she had done, so everyday we finished and put signs about what wouldn't go into the exhibition and she would leave extremely upset. The next day we would go back to work and discover she had taken all the outsiders and put them back into the exhibition list. It was a sort of tango - one step forward, one step backward. We didn't want to offend her, but the wor k had to be done. Eventually, we found a way to collaborate and put all the garments together, highlighting which were the selected ones so that we could coherently see what was in and what was out. From that moment I realised that this lady wouldn't let you do what you wanted, she wanted the work to be done her way because she was an absolute perfectionist.

How did the exhibition at Holon Design Museum happen? Ayala Raz: Work on that previous event in Tel Aviv stopped after six months and I didn't see her for 3 years. Then there was an initiative organised by Holon Municipality, a special evening in honour of Lea Gottieb to celebrate her 90th birthday with a fashion show featuring the latest designs she created, her models and all the people who worked with her throughout the years; it was a very special experience. I remember she was very happy when she stepped on the stage to receive a huge bouquet of flowers. In October 2012, the Design Museum in Holon contacted me and asked if I could take over the job of putting together an exhibition for Lea Gottlieb. They wanted to finish in March, which meant I had about 4 months to work on it. It wouldn't have been possible to work on this exhibition on such as short time if I hadn't carried out my researches years before.

Can you tell us more about the selecting process for this exhibition - did you find it challenging? Ayala Raz: Most of the time an exhibition curator has to deal with finding objects; this time I had too many objects, but it was a very nice experience all the same. The research was almost done, I knew each garment by heart and I also knew from the very beginning what I wanted to put in and what I wanted to put out as I had all the time of absorbing each garment since 2004, so I had genuinely grasped the essence of each collection. I worked day and night because I wanted it to be the best. I had great help from the museum, from anybody at Gottex, from two girls who worked together with me and from a student who had started working with me when we had done the work for the Art Museum in Tel Aviv, and who is now in New York developing a research about Gottex. They all gave their contribution to the event and the best thing was that, after Lea's daughter Miriam Ruzow saw the exhibition, she sent me a bouquet of flowers and said that no important garment had been left out and this meant a lot to me.

What is Lea Gottlieb's merit in fashion history – innovating swim and beachwear and putting Israeli fashion on the map?Ayala Raz: She added glam to beachwear and, while some may claim that this doesn't change the history of fashion, before her beachwear was conceived as practical garments that you used when you were out in the water. When she arrived on the scene, she brought with her another attitude - the idea that you can wear beachwear all day long. To make sure this happened she added all kinds of outfits that before her were not part of the beachwear wardrobe, but they were considered as casualwear. In Israel she was the greatest fashion designer of all times, she was a genuine trendsetter. In the '90s things changed: fashion turned to basic and minimalist garments leaving behind glamour, so she sold the company and then went on to create some magnificent pieces under her own name, Lea, without caring about costs, but just thinking about the most perfect creation.

In your opinion which contemporary designers are somehow getting inspired by Gottlieb's heritage?Ayala Raz: I can't think of anybody who may be taking inspiration from her in a striking way. Molly Grad, the current Creative Director at Gottex, has obviously absorbed Gottlieb's heritage and style, but things have changed, from fabrics to tastes and markets as well. In her designs Molly Grad often takes the glam side of Lea Gottlieb, but reworks it acording her own inspirations, she is a young designer and artist, but she knows her market very well and also understands that today you have to focus on pieces that sell.

There is a strong connection between Gottlieb's pieces and art: apart from taking inspiration from art, Gottlieb's catalogues also featured colourful illustrations that could have been paintings. In your opinion, when does fashion turn into art?Ayala Raz: I often ask myself this question, when does fashion ends and art start? When you look at Alexander McQueen's beautiful outfits you know that's art because that's far away from functional. Lea Gottlieb's works were mainly functional, yet art was a strong and energetic force in her creations, especially in her designs that took inspiration from masters such as Van Gogh, Matisse or Toulouse-Lautrec. She transferred for example in her pareos motifs from paintings and this was a kind of art, because these weren't just functional garments, but you could have hung them up a wall and they would still look beautiful. The other important thing that some may connect with art is the fact that she always had the female body in mind when she designed and always knew how to put a design in the right way so that the garment would fit beautifully and the wearer would look good. She knew how to flatter the female body and this was also one of her bestselling secrets.

In 1985 Gottex sold over one million pieces of the Seven Suit, this is an amazing record for today's standards, we live indeed in a world divided between expensive luxury items and cheap garments often made exploiting labour forces. There are a lot of successful brands out there, but there is no designer/brand who can boast about selling so many pieces of one garment, why do you think such a goal is impossible to achieve nowadays? Ayala Raz: It's a combination of many things which work well for somebody who shows up at the right time. Coco Chanel wouldn't have done what she did if she didn't live at the end of the 19th century. All fashion designers whose contributions are remembered for generations had the chance to work at the time that was best for them. If Lea Gottlieb with all her talent and innovation had lived now, things may have not worked so well for her.

Where would you like to take this exhibition in future?Ayala Raz: The first call should be New York also because the American market was the best foreign market for Gottex; the next stop should then be Paris or London. I hope that will happen because Lea Gottlieb's legacy should be preserved and cherished.

"Lady of the Daisies: Homage to the late designer and entrepreneur Lea Gottlieb", Design Museum Holon, Israel, until 4th May 2013.

Image Credits:

All image courtesy of Design Museum Holon. The number refers to the image order in this post.

April 21, 2013

In yesterday's post we looked at futuristic fonts and types, so let's continue the same thread for another day to look at Ruben Torres with a vintage image from my archives.

Born in Dallas, TX, Torres graduated from Southern Methodist University in 1952, then moved to Paris where he worked as an apprenticeship for Jules-François Crahay.

After a brief stint back in the States, where he designed ski wear in Portland, Oregon, for sportswear label White Stag, in the early '60s he settled in Paris to work for Nina Ricci (between 1961 and 1964). In 1966, he presented his first collection under his own name and also started collaborating with Warner's Lingerie in New York designing a line of lingerie and loungewear.

Famous for his futuristic designs such as the Concord bikini, a one-piece swimsuit with bra cups made of two foam rubber discs held on by suction, Torres injected in his designs the optimism of the new Space discoveries.

For the Autumn/Winter 1967 season Torres took inspiration from comic book heroes, he abolished accessories and opted for a minimalist essentiality. The collection featured Courregesian lines, unisex suits and rocket-shaped cloaks, like the ones pictured here (very Decima Vittima style and maybe among the inspirations for Prada's S/S 13 collection with its simple yet disquieting geometries...).

Torres also designed the uniforms for the French Olympic team at the 1968 Grenoble Winter Olympic Games. Unfortunately there are not many images featured in books about Torres's creations, designed for an age of speed, function and leisure, as Torres himself often highlighted in interviews from the '60s. Time to rediscover him?

April 20, 2013

Wim Crouwel is among the great Dutch design icons, he is indeed the single most influential graphic designer in post-war Holland. Famous for injecting a creative approach in designing letters, Crouwel produced typographic designs that captured the essence of the emerging computer age.

"Wim Crouwel: A Graphic Odyssey", a recently opened exhibition at Glasgow's Lighthouse, celebrates the designer through key moments in his career, analysing his approach and exploring his innovative use of grid-based layouts and typographic systems to produce consistently striking asymmetric visuals.

Born in 1928 in Groningen, Crouwel trained as a painter, but then became interested in the design and architectural ideas of the Nieuwe Zakelijkheid movement. After moving to Amsterdam in the '50s he started taking evening classes at the graphic design department of the IVKNO (Instituut voor Kunst Nijverheids Onderwijs) and developed an interest in Swiss typography. He felt indeed attracted by the clean and minimalist approach of the letters and the elements suggested by Swiss designers including Karl Gerstner, Gérard Ifert and Ernst Scheidegger.

Crouwel shared with them a sense of order, an elemental and basic aesthetic and, though he deeply loved art and design, he soon abandoned his passion for more expressive works to dedicate himself to finding a pure aesthetic.

In his mind design had a precise function, putting order to things and provide people with clarity, even though Crouwel didn't always abide to his personal principles and at times used awkward juxtapositions of forms, colours and types.

In 1957 hand-drawn letterforms appeared in Crouwel's designs, around the same time he created what became one of his best known posters for an exhibition by Fernand Léger.

The letterforms featured were composed as a typographical interpretation of Lèger's works, and, in the following decades, typographic characters that drew precise correspondences evoking the characteristics of specfic artists became Crouwel's trademark skill.

A few years later, in 1963, he founded the Total Design studio, and became known as the designer of posters, catalogues and exhibitions of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

The studio often found itself designing entire alphabets, even though that wasn't one of its ambitions: for an exhibition by Claes Oldenburg at the Stedelijk, Crouwel created a poster characterised by letters that called to mind Oldenburg's works and then designed an entire alphabet for the artist.

In 1967, Crouwel and TD hit the headlines when they designed the New Alphabet, a typeface suited to the composing system using the cathode-ray tube technology. The system was actually designed with a high tech world in mind as the letters were drawn on a variable grid (5 to 9 units, based on the square, though the system allowed for horizontal and vertical scaling).

In a way the New Alphabet was perfectly tuned on the futuristic and Space Age trend that at the time was also influencing fashion. Crouwel created the font as an experiment, he claimed it was "over-the-top and never meant to be really used" since it was unreadable, but the New Alphabet received massive coverage and a lot of criticism.

More experiments followed with grid-based letterforms, inspired by his interest in crystallography and the crystal structures of the patterns generated by early computer technology. The letterforms developed into the Fodor and the Stedelijk systems, characterised by a futuristic computer style.

In the early '70s Italian manufacturer Olivetti invited Crouwel to design an alphabet for electric typewriters. The graphic designer developed for the company a monoline sans-serif with three widths based on a rectangle with 45 degree corners that the company called Politene. In the end the machine for which the system was intended wasn't produced as there was no more interest in electric typewriters and Crouwel retained the copyright for these letterforms.

Two years later he developed the standard numeral stamps for the Dutch PPT based on the Olivetti Politene designs, using the word Nederland and the numerals indicating the value.

Quite a few young designers began using characters for the New Alphabet in the '80s (in music the characters reappeared on the cover of Joy Division's 1988 album "Substance"- View this photo and on the 12” single for "Atmosphere" - View this photo), so London-based type company The Foundry approached Crouwel and asked him to revive the New Alphabet for The Foundry's Architype series.

The most successful face Crouwel created for The Foundry is the Gridnik, based on the alphabet be created for Olivetti; another one is The Foundry Catalogue that moves from the 1970 alphabet for Claes Oldenburg.

The exhibition at The Lighthouse, edited and produced by The Design Museum in London where "Wim Crouwel: A Graphic Odyssey" was launched in 2011, features posters and typographic work spanning over 60 years and it's worth seeing if you missed the London event.

Crouwel's futuristic systems, fonts and types look pretty modern even in our digital age, that's a good enough reason to keep on rediscovering this graphic designer and being inspired by him.

April 19, 2013

A previous post on this site indirectly celebrated Henry van de Velde through a showcase during Milan's Design Week. Let's continue the thread today with a different celebration, a lighter one if I may say so (we will be hopefully exploring in a more in-depth way van de Velde in future posts on this site).

A few months ago, Nomad, the solar rechargeable and multifunctional portable lamp designed by Alain Gilles Studio for O’Sun (and featured in a previous post on this site), won the Henry van de Velde Label, a quality label for Flemish design (promoted by Design Flanders), and also won the Henry van de Velde Public Award 2012. The drop and sock-resistant lamp gets the energy for its LED panel from an integrated solar panel, providing a great substitute for fossil fuel lighting, heavily used in parts of the world without access to electricity.

The lamp was initially designed for families living in developing countries with no access to electricity or who find themselves in emergency situations such as natural or humanitatran disasters, but the product is obviously an environmentally friendly solution for all of us.In a statament released for the Belgium is Design 2012 event, Gilles said, "I believe in functionality. Whether I create fairly artistic objects or more everyday products, I always make sure that they are, or remain, very functional and highly usable. Nevertheless, I always want them to tell a story and convey a message. In the case of the Nomad solar lamp this narrative had to be readable by different audiences with different needs and wants. More than functional in terms of its performance, its appeal had to be multifunctional: to be able to serve as the one and only light for a whole family, while at the same time being a desirable enough product for design-lovers to want to acquire it. A tool of necessity and a reflection of user behaviour and consumption, above all else this lamp is an object where functionality is key."

Last month Gilles' lamp proved it is genuinely multifunctional: the lamp reappeared at the beginning of March in Paris during the presentation for Jean-Paul Lespagnard's new collection.

Rather than bags, Lespagnard's models carried Gilles' lamps decorated with sparkling gems, proving there are fun ways to integrate interior design and fashion, promoting collaborations, raising social and ecological awareness and celebrating Henry van de Velde as a beacon of light in the art, architecture and design fields.